Operation Sports at 2K Sports Part Two: The Misconceptions About Game Development

[BegBy]

All these videos do is showcase that hiring people without experience is unsurprisingly, a bad idea. Hiring people with little to no experience and as a result producing less than standard (a metric set by them) product shouldn't be shocking to anyone. What's shocking is consumer acceptance of their "We're trying, but it's hard" statement. Every industry is filled with new talent/apprentices/greenhorns, etc, but they are also surrounded by experience as to not detract from primary goals.

NBA 2K17 is not a good NBA basketball simulation video game. Fundamentally it is flawed and as long as legacy issues continue to be present in new iterations it will continue to be a bad representation of simulation basketball. Their focus seems to be on game modes that make money which also detracts from simulation basketball.

Everyone knows game development is difficult. So are thousands of other jobs. Typically people won't allow other professionals to perform as poorly as the 2K team have in recent years without some form of accountability. Consumer backlash is dreaded by companies for a reason. When you make a product that isn't quite at the standards people expect and do little about it, all the while working on other aspects of product development that is entirely and expressly focused on making money via an element of the aforementioned less than standard product, consumers should be upset. Most companies wouldn't live through years of that because consumers would avoid buying their crap. Why should game devs get special treatment? Who cares that you've chatted with them on the forums? People need to look at this situation objectively.

Keep the less experienced staff on. Use their passion and basketball knowledge as it's not something to balk at. However, surround them with more people who can help translate their intangibles into actual code that makes the game good again. Or be transparent with the community and admit that 2K's focus has been and will be online modes that generate cash as opposed to NBA simulation basketball.

[Retropyro]

Quote: Originally Posted by ChaseB

Yes, it can be very hard to do that, especially because of how things load in, when they load in, what needs to load in, etc. You can't say let's shorten loading times from 1 minute to 15 seconds (oh and let's make it more interactive, too!) without a lot of engineering work in many cases. And are you going to pull engineers off actual things that will matter more to the final game, or will you say "spend 2 months shortening loading times by fixing the back end" or whatever instead of helping out with Feature X.

Are you serious? If the game took 1 minute to load, I'd be very happy. I can't start this game without a minimum 10 minute wait just to get to the main menu. That is beyond ridiculous. I'm not alone, just go on the 2K Twitter support. Never mind that 2K support is an absolute joke, completely useless.

How can you seriously say that something like this is OK? NBA 2K is the ONLY game with this problem. The post by BegBy below is spot on.

And yes, I would pull engineers off others things, because if my consumers can't even get into the game in a reasonable time (again, we're not talking 1 minute here but 10, minimum) what use is there in fixing anything else. You don't construct a building with a flimsy foundation and put your best people to work on making the apartments look pretty.

[rhein77]

Quote: Originally Posted by BegBy

All these videos do is showcase that hiring people without experience is unsurprisingly, a bad idea. Hiring people with little to no experience and as a result producing less than standard (a metric set by them) product shouldn't be shocking to anyone. What's shocking is consumer acceptance of their "We're trying, but it's hard" statement. Every industry is filled with new talent/apprentices/greenhorns, etc, but they are also surrounded by experience as to not detract from primary goals. NBA 2K17 is not a good NBA basketball simulation video game. Fundamentally it is flawed and as long as legacy issues continue to be present in new iterations it will continue to be a bad representation of simulation basketball. Their focus seems to be on game modes that make money which also detracts from simulation basketball. Everyone knows game development is difficult. So are thousands of other jobs. Typically people won't allow other professionals to perform as poorly as the 2K team have in recent years without some form of accountability. Consumer backlash is dreaded by companies for a reason. When you make a product that isn't quite at the standards people expect and do little about it, all the while working on other aspects of product development that is entirely and expressly focused on making money via an element of the aforementioned less than standard product, consumers should be upset. Most companies wouldn't live through years of that because consumers would avoid buying their crap. Why should game devs get special treatment? Who cares that you've chatted with them on the forums? People need to look at this situation objectively. Keep the less experienced staff on. Use their passion and basketball knowledge as it's not something to balk at. However, surround them with more people who can help translate their intangibles into actual code that makes the game good again. Or be transparent with the community and admit that 2K's focus has been and will be online modes that generate cash as opposed to NBA simulation basketball.

Couldn't of said it any better myself. Great post!


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[BegBy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Retropyro

Are you serious? If the game took 1 minute to load, I'd be very happy. I can't start this game without a minimum 10 minute wait just to get to the main menu. That is beyond ridiculous. I'm not alone, just go on the 2K Twitter support. Never mind that 2K support is an absolute joke, completely useless. How can you seriously say that something like this is OK? NBA 2K is the ONLY game with this problem. The post by BegBy below is spot on. And yes, I would pull engineers off others things, because if my consumers can't even get into the game in a reasonable time (again, not we're not talking 1 minute here but 10, minimum) what use is there in fixing anything else. You don't construct a building with a flimsy foundation and put your best people to work on making the apartments look pretty.

A wait time of anything over 3-4 minutes is pushing unacceptable. It's 2017. If they were a smaller studio without the financial resources to employ another 2-3 people for server maintenance or whatever aspect that's failing, I'd understand, but money is not an issue for them. Their actions and lack thereof speak volumes. How that isn't blatantly obvious and downright insulting to more people is beyond me, because I'd bet my last dollar that if it were your mechanic, doctor, cashier at the convenience store, cell phone, cake mix or whatever else you can think of (under)performing like this, whilst telling you it's fine they are just "trying to fix it, but it's hard" each and everyone of us would be irate and stop rewarding them via our money.

[noot]

Quote: Originally Posted by BegBy

A wait time of anything over 3-4 minutes is pushing unacceptable. It's 2017. If they were a smaller studio without the financial resources to employ another 2-3 people for server maintenance or whatever aspect that's failing, I'd understand, but money is not an issue for them. Their actions and lack thereof speak volumes. How that isn't blatantly obvious and downright insulting to more people is beyond me, because I'd bet my last dollar that if it were your mechanic, doctor, cashier at the convenience store, cell phone, cake mix or whatever else you can think of (under)performing like this, whilst telling you it's fine they are just "trying to fix it, but it's hard" each and everyone of us would be irate and stop rewarding them via our money.

The difference is that if you don't like the service in those industries you can take your money elsewhere. But since 2k hasn't had any real competition in a while, they can get away with this kind of stuff because where else are you going to take your money? The sad truth is that these problems will likely remain unless Live or some other game really steps it up.

[RainZ]

Chase must have been talking about the "standard" load times when its not bugging out of like 1 min or 30 seconds. I doubt he meant the glitched load times of 10-15 minutes are acceptable....

Also, no way that is going to be allowed to happen next year lol. They would have seen the backlash no doubt and some a$$ would have been kicked about it...

[basehead617]

Quote: Originally Posted by BegBy

Keep the less experienced staff on. Use their passion and basketball knowledge as it's not something to balk at. However, surround them with more people who can help translate their intangibles into actual code that makes the game good again.

You should probably know more about the topic before writing a rant.

The NBA 2K team is one of the most experienced in the industry, with many top engineers and producers having worked at the studio for 20+ years.

This video just happens to be talking about some of the newer hires.

[BA2929]

Quote: Originally Posted by noot

The difference is that if you don't like the service in those industries you can take your money elsewhere. But since 2k hasn't had any real competition in a while, they can get away with this kind of stuff because where else are you going to take your money? The sad truth is that these problems will likely remain unless Live or some other game really steps it up.

You could take your money and leave it in your wallet come Sept/Oct if you're that dissatisfied with this game and the direction it's heading. I mean, you don't HAVE to buy it.

I fully expect the 2k board of OS to be 100% dead come the release of 2k18 with no comments because 99% of everyone on it this year just complains about how bad 2k17 is. No way I'd buy 2k18 if I was as mad as most of you are.

Anyway, I enjoyed this video and would love to see the same sort of thing happen with the MLB The Show crew. Love seeing some behind the scenes stuff like this.